Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description in this section is not prior art to the claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
An image forming apparatus such as a copier, a facsimile, and a multi-functional peripheral has had a following problem. That is, when an original document to be read includes a sheet of unnecessary blank sheet page on which no object such as a character and a figure is recorded, the image data of the sheet of the blank sheet page is read without change and image formation is performed on a recording sheet, then the unnecessary blank sheet page is included after copying process. This leads to deterioration of output efficiency.
To solve the problem, for example, there has been a proposed image forming apparatus that performs image formation on one side or both sides of a record sheet, based on image data of an one-sided document constituted of a sheet having an object such as a character and a figure recorded on an one side thereof, or image data of a double-sided document constituted of a sheet having objects recorded on both sides thereof. The image forming apparatus includes a blank page judging unit, which determines whether a blank page in which no object is recorded is included based on the image data. When the image forming apparatus performs the image formation on one side of a record sheet, the blank page judging unit determines whether a blank page is included, and when the blank page judging unit determines that a blank page is included, the image formation is performed excluding this blank page. This ensures to remove only an unnecessary blank page and effectively prevent lowering of efficiency due to image formation of an unnecessary blank page.
There has been a proposed image forming apparatus that scans an original document at a scanner unit to obtain digital image data for outputting to such as a facsimile and a copier. The image forming apparatus includes a blank sheet detecting unit that detects a blank sheet page among image data output from the scanner unit, a warning unit that transmits an alert when a blank sheet is detected at the blank sheet detecting unit, and a recording unit that records image data output from the scanner unit. This ensures to detect a scanned blank sheet easily even when an original document is scanned with being set in mistaking its front and back.
There has been a proposed image processing apparatus including an image input unit to scan an original document to input image data, a compression unit to compress this image data, and a storage unit to store the data compressed by this compression unit. The image processing apparatus includes a blank sheet determining unit that determines whether or not the image data is a blank sheet document based on the amount of the compressed data and an image processing unit that performs a predetermined image processing based on the result of the determination by the blank sheet determining unit. This ensures to determine an original document to be a blank sheet without locating a new function circuit.